History
In the past there have been some great yoyoers from the UK, in fact the first World Yo-Yo Champion was from the UK.
More recently, in 1998, a big craze hit the UK, it was part of the world craze, which was, the biggest ever seen to date. There had been crazes in the UK in the past but nowhere near as big as the 98' craze. More people started yo-yoing than ever before. In the UK the BYYA was created to help players in as many ways as possible. Bringing about a standard form of yoyo competition was the most common form of help.
In 1999 when the craze died down and only the most hardcore yoyoers were left the BYYA all but disappeared. There were a hand full of attempts to reintroduce the BYYA and the National Yo-Yo Contest but these attempts on the whole came to nothing.
In 2000 the were no yoyo competitions at all in the UK and despite the huge new wave of tricks coming out of the USA and Japan the UK scene was very small scale. There were still players' yo-yoing, just no real meets, and comps or any helpful UK based web sites.
In 2001 a group of yoyoers found each other through a UK web board. One of them (Jakeway) held the first yoyo competition for over a year it was called 'The UK Southern Regionals' even though it turned out to be the only competition of that year.
But again in 2002 it appeared there would be no competitions at all so I ran the UK Nationals along side the BJC (British Juggling Convention), they gave us free space and as some jugglers yoyo so it really helped attendance. I also took on responsibility trying to set up the BYYA in 2002.
In 2003 turn out for the competition was not that large but thanks again to the free space the BJC provided it all turned out good.
2004 saw a lot of new players as well as some older ones remerge. The UK Nationals
was once again held in the BJC. The competition had more competitors than in
the past couple of years and saw the youngest ever UK champion. For the first
time in 6 years UK players attended the World Yo-Yo Contest. The first UK Throw
Down took place and the UK Yo-Yo Southern Regional Contest (SRC for short) also
took place. It looks like the UK scene is growing but only time will tell……